10.10.3 Screen saver/Desktop preference pane only accessing vertically-oriented photos

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10.10.3 Screen saver/Desktop preference pane only accessing vertically-oriented photos

Two days ago I upgraded to OS X 10.10.3. The "upgrade" from iPhoto to Photos broke the functionality in my desktop and screen saver photos, however. I have a bunch of my photos in albums entitled "Backgrounds" and "Screen Savers," respectively. Those albums were successfully ported over from the iPhoto Library to the new Photos Library. However, now when I go to the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane, whatever album/event I browse under "Photos," it only displays the vertically-oriented (portrait) photos, and does not show any of the horizontally-oriented (landscape) photos. When I look at the Photos app itself, those photos are all still there. But this bug means that 90% of my photos are not included in my screen saver, and none of my background photos are available for the Desktop background, as they're all landscape-oriented. Are other people experiencing the same problem? Does anyone know how to fix this? Will Apple release a bug fix to restore functionality? I want to be able to see my photos on my background and screen saver!

Jared

MacBook

Posted on Apr 12, 2015 7:58 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 12, 2015 8:56 AM in response to jared-lee

I'm using the Origami style in Screen Saver preferences and a Smart Album of the last 12 month's photos in Photos. Both portrait and landscape photos are being displayed. This is on a 2011 MB Air running 10.10.3.

-Jay

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Answer 2

Apr 13, 2015 5:51 AM in response to Jay Deitch

I am also having the problem of not being able to choose Photos Library. I hope this could be just a bug update. The new Photos app is a nice update. A learning curve for sure,.

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Answer 3

jared-lee Author

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Apr 15, 2015 4:24 PM in response to jared-lee

After being on the phone with AppleCare senior advisors for two stints totaling 2.5 hours today, my problem is now resolved. The issue was in the import of my iPhoto Library to Photos. Long ago while using iPhoto, I had disabled the setting that made copies of imported photos in the iPhoto Library. I did that because I thought it was pointless to keep two copies of my enormous photo library on my hard drive (and I like how I organize my photos better than the iPhoto Library does it). Anyway, when importing pictures to iPhoto with that setting turned off, iPhoto automatically created symbolic links in the iPhoto Library that pointed to the location of all the originals. When that library was ported over to Photos, apparently the application did not yet have permission to access all those photos; I was seeing all the thumbnails in Photos, but I didn't realize this permissions issue until I double-clicked on one of the thumbnails to view it. A dialog box popped up, and once I gave it permission to access the folder where all my pictures were, it started the process of creating all those symbolic links again from the Photos Library. After a few minutes, it was done, and my Screen Saver & Desktop preference pane could once again view *all* my photos in my Photos Library, both portrait-oriented and landscape-oriented (plus panoramas)! In the end it was a fairly simple fix, but it was difficult to figure out the cause. Hopefully this can help anyone else who runs into the same issue!

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